I chinked it musically in its purse.

"Come in," she said, "and speak to
Clou."

A ladder, and another horrid object at the
top, holding a light—a horrid object, with
nose and chin sharply crooked, like a parrot's
bill, and one eye beaten in; dwarfish too in
figure, and full of an elfish activity. This
was the Old Wolf.

"Why do you let them in, Ki-ki?" he said,
dancing at the top of the ladder. "They
can't come up; you know they can't. I
won't let them up. I won't."

"Stand away, Clou, or be brained with
this key. I spit at you."

"Ahr-rr-r! Would you, Tigresse? I'll
claw your heart out."

"Cr-r-r-r! You one-eyed imp, where's
your throat?" she said, now at the top of
the ladder, and pushing him back. " Here is
a monsieur come with gold, and are we not
to take him in?"

By the light of the lantern she was leering
horribly. For a moment I turned to go
down and leave the spot; but I thought of
the end and object of my journey, and
stayed.

The Old Wolf was growling to himself in a
corner. We were still at the top of the
ladder.

"Will you take them over?" said the
Tigresse.

"No, no," snarled the Wolf. "Let them
go. Ah-r-r!"

The Tigresse bounded at him, and I saw
her long claws scraping his throat. He
gnawed and shrieked, then got free, and
grovelled.

"There!" said the Tigresse, putting back
her grizzled hair, "you will get as much
every minute if you cross me. Open the
window, and look out at the river."

He did as he was bidden, cursing her; and
we saw the black river below rushing on in
a desperate race.

"Good," said the Tigresse, "it is slackening,
we will take you over in an hour's time.
Wait in here, there is a fire."

"Hoo hoo," whined the Old Wolf, crawling
on all fours to the door. "Not in here; not
as yet: you know why, don't you?"

"Pig-brained! not done of that yet! Let
me see." She entered with the lantern,
snatching up a cloth, and we heard sounds
of rubbing. "Now come in; sit by the
fire, and don't heed dotard Clou—the
Old Wolf, they call him. Why, he has no
teeth."

"But I can draw blood for all that," he
said with a grin.

She gave a glare from her cat's eyes, and
screaming to him, "Go out! You shan't
stay to chatter here!" dragged him away.

There was a rude stool—the only seat
in the place—against the wall, which I
drew over to the fire, and then sat down.
There were a few logs in the corner, which
I took and threw on the fire. Jacquot's
father, however, would not come near it; but
kept roaming round the room like a panther
in his den, muttering to himself uneasily
concerning his mare. How she would break
loose and be lost in the forest, or else be
carried away by robbers; all in a sort of
whining grumble, common, as I have before
noted, to the boors of his own region. So at
last I told him he might go down and look
after her himself. He departed hastily,
leaving me alone over the fire. No sign of
the Old Wolf or the Tigresse, whom I heard
at odd intervals wrangling shrilly.

I was very weary and tired, and kept
stirring the logs and looking about the room
to keep myself awake. The log-room itself
might have been the upper chamber of an old
wooden light-house; for the sides slanted in
straight up to the roof, or to the black void
which might be the roof, gallery, lantern,
anything. The sides were plain undressed
logs of an old red wood, bolted together very
rudely, like the interior of an old Dutch
windmill, its axle of melancholy creak at
rest for the night, up in the bleak void.
Two or three cabin windows, high up and
beyond reach, cut in the log walls with heavy
outside shutters slapped to at every gust.
A great seaman's chest with a large lid stood
in the corner. Logs of wood were heaped up
all about. Logs for the fire by themselves,
in a high black heap in another corner. An
open trap in the floor, through which we
had come up into the room, with two blocks
and pullies fixed high up in the wall.

Eyes beginning to grow heavy: fire
beginning to burn up with a gentle glow,
terribly provocative of sleep, at the same
time jerking strange shadows in spasms on
the red walls of the old Dutch mill—of the
Ferry-house, I mean—Grindoff the miller,
and his Men. Eye-lids drooping wearily,
for, "When the wind blows, Then the mill
goes, and our hearts are all blythe and
merry," and Grindoff the miller, the Old
Wolf—I mean Royal Adelphi Theatre—and
his Men, filing across; each with a white
sack on his back, over the bridge, up
the slope, up the ladder into the mill, all
into the mill,—"when the wind blows!"
with Count Frederick, Friederich Friburg
in green Hussar jacket and Hessians, who
has lost his way, and the funny serving man,
who has lost his way, too; both now nodding
drowsily over the fire in the mill. Now,
supposing that person Grindoff, the miller;
what can he have those little bulk-heads
and hooks for? To swing up his sacks
when the mill goes! To swing up Count
Friederich and the funny serving man,
coming on them from behind as they sleep.
Soft music. What if he, Grindoff, should
come up the trap in listen-shoes, and
should steal behind me as I sleep, and
take something from beneath his miller's
frock, and suddenly dispatch me; then, lift